A calmer chameleon

"The extremities of my life never cease to amuse me," says Boy George in this rambling sequel to his 1995 autobiography, Take It Like a Man. Needless to say, these pages feature plenty of extremities.

When they are not being waved about in the dressing room of Taboo, George's musical that transferred from the West End to Broadway, they are gleefully being talked about. That of the performance artist Leigh Bowery, for example, apparently "looked like a huge bruised banana".

If you consider such remarks to be in bad taste then this book is not for you. Words are the only thing George does not mince. He can become quite polemical (and pretty much unquotable in a family newspaper) on the subject of sex: "I reckon we are all made up of equal parts of Rambo and Lucille Ball"; "straight men who claim they can't tell if another man is attractive are especially nauseating"; "masturbation is still playing with a penis, even if it's your own". Enough already.

Thanks to years (and thousands of pounds worth) of therapy, George now knows when he has had enough. His druggy days are over - as Tracey Emin said on entering his Gothic pile in Hampstead: "I'm glad to see it didn't all go up your nose."

Today he insists he mainly keeps his nose to the grindstone: writing songs, deejaying, designing clothes, taking photographs of semi-naked boys. Straight is a celebration of all these joys and a confession that he is still addicted to predominantly heterosexual men - even when, like the Scottish soldier about to leave for Afghanistan, they steal his digital camera as well as his heart.

However, George also knows that other people's misfortunes are more amusing than their good luck. Straight is at its most interesting when things are going wrong: the various, disastrous reunions of Culture Club, Rosie O'Donnell's control freakery in New York. The butch billionairess made sure that Taboo opened in America but, suggests George, her diva-like demands also ensured that it closed prematurely.

He makes a point of giving discredit where discredit is due. Madonna, Elton John, George Michael and Pete Tong (who won't play George's records on Radio 1) are among those who feel the rough side of his tongue. The self-confessed "jaded old queen" is just as tough on himself.

Buddhism and a system of feng shui called Nine Ki have not stopped him being boastful. Who cares if he is the only person to have won Celebrity Stars in Their Eyes twice? Or that no one has been offered more money to appear in I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here!? He does. The fact that, as a vegetarian, he has had to turn down £140,000 from Burger King, who wish to use Karma Chameleon in a commercial, clearly rankles. The self-portrait he paints is of a man who loves money almost as much as make-up.

The Big Apple, though it can be "as cold as a rent boy's heart", has given Mr O'Dowd a warm welcome in the form of a second home and a second chance.

His fans will be happy, but they will also be relieved to hear that the new "spiritual" Boy George sounds very much like the old one. Straight proves the mouthy Mary can't shut up, so it is only right that he should have the last word: "In any area of one's life the ugliest response is silence."